L. Frank Baum - Oz 18 Read online

  “Tatters! Bill! Urtha!” shouted Grampa, his own voice hoarse with excitement.

  “The wiz-ard’s coming back and we’ve got to get out of this garden or be lantern trees forever!”

  “Forever!” gasped the Prince of Raghad, who had scarcely recovered from the chimney business. As fast as he could, Grampa told of the flower messages, and when they hurried back to the bed, a pansy sentence had already grown there.

  “Good-night,” said the pansies politely, then fluttering off their stems, blew like gay little butterflies across the lawn.

  “Good night!” choked Grampa bitterly. “It’s the worst night I ever heard of. I won’t be rooted to the spot, nor a tree for any old wizard wizzing. Come on! Company ‘tenshun!”

  “Here I come by the name of Bill,” crowed the weather cock, hurling into the air. “But what are we coming to?” panted Tatters, shouldering his red umbrella dutifully, while Urtha kept anxiously beside him.

  “We’re going back to those stepping stones, puffed Grampa, stumping along determinedly. The lanterns winked lower and lower and soon it was so dark and shadowy they lost the path entirely. Smothering his alarm, Grampa marched doggedly on, bumping into benches and trees, but never once pausing.

  “They ought tb be here some place,” wheezed the old soldier and then stopped with a grunt, for he had run plump into an iron railing in the dark.

  “What is it?” whispered Tatters, straining his eyes in the gathering gloom.

  “Why, it’s a flight of steps,” cried Grampa in the next breath. Feeling for the gate, he entered the little enclosure and struck a match. By the flickering light, he saw six circular golden steps and on the top one in jewelled letters were just three words: “Gorba’s Winding Stairway.” Then the match sputtered and went out.

  “Winding stairway,” puffed the old soldier joyfully. “Why, this must be the way out. They wind up, I’ll bet a gum drop! Get aboard everybody. Hurry! Here Loveliness!”

  Taking Urtha’s hand, Grampa guided her up the first step. Tatters stood on the second with Bill on his shoulder. Grampa mounted quickly to the top and striking another match looked anxiously for directions. There were no more inscriptions, but under Gorba’s name was a tiny gold handle. The match was burning lower and lower and just as it went out Grampa seized the handle and turned it sharply to the left. Then-“Great Gollywockers!” gasped the old soldier, clutching at the rail. “It’s winding down!”

  Poor Grampa, in his hurry, had turned the handle the wrong way, and next instant the brave little company were whirling down the wizard’s winding stairway, ‘round and ‘round, down and down, ‘round and down, down and ‘round, until they were too dizzy to know where they were going.

  “Hold on!” called Grampa wildly. “Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!” And hold on was about all they could do.

  CHAPTER 8: Strange Happenings in Perhaps City

  ON THE same bright morning that Grampa and Tatters started from Ragbad, the Peer of Perhaps City sat cozily breakfasting with Percy Vere. Percy was a poet and attended to all the guess work in Perhaps City. True he was a terribly forgetful poet, but he did the best he could and was a prime favorite with the old mountain monarch. Perhaps City itself is a tall, towered city of gold set high in the Maybe Mountains of Oz. So steep and craggy are its peaks that none of the dwellers in the city ever descended into the valleys below. Indeed there is little need of it, for life in Perhaps City, owing to the jolly nature and good management of old Peer Haps, is so delightfully entertaining that the people have no desire to leave. The Happsies themselves are of the light-hearted and old-fashioned race of Winkies, who in olden Oz times, settled all the countries of the East. The only one who ever left the city at all was Abrog, the High Sky prophet of the realm, and to his goings and comings no one paid much attention, for he was a queer, silent old man, who spoke but once a year and only then to prophesy as to the weather, crops and important events that would take place in the town.

  So far these events had all been happy and fortunate ones, and on this sunshiny morning, old Peer Haps, buttering his muffins in his cozy breakfast room, felt so well pleased and content with his lot that he fairly beamed upon Percy Vere.

  For his part, Percy Vere always was happy and, beaming back at the king, he shook his long locks out of his eye and laughed merrily at old Peer. Percy Vere always felt that his patron enjoyed his breakfast particularly if Percy opened the proceedings with a verse, so he sang, as breakfast was served, this ditty:

  “Oh, muffins mellow light and clear, Fit diet for a mountaineer; Oh, muffins pale and yellow! Oh, muffins sweet to sniff and eat, How you refresh a-a-” The poet’s merry blue eyes grew round and puzzled, as they always did when he forgot a word.

  “Fellow!” chuckled the Peer, taking a sip of coffee. “Percy, my child, you are ridiculish!”

  “I am ridiculish, I know it; A young, a poor forgetful—er” “Poet!” spluttered Peer Haps, with another chuckle. “Thanks old Nutmeg!” sighed Percy, helping himself to another muffin. “You always know what I mean.

  “Nut Meg!” roared Peer Haps. He never got over being amused at Percy’s informal way of addressing him. “Nut Meg! Well, I’ll be grated!” And immediately he was, for at that very moment, the folding doors flew open and in rushed Abrog the prophet.

  “Greater than all other Rulers in Oz, great of the greatest!” began the old man, salaaming before Peer Haps, “a great misfortune threatens, approaches, is about to take place.”

  “What?” cried the Peer, choking on the last bit of his muffin. It was strange enough to have Abrog speak at all when it was not the day for prophecy, but to have him speak in this foreboding fashion was simply too terrible.

  “Speak out! Speak up!” cried the Forgetful Poet, leaping to his feet: “Speak out, speak up And then get hence, We cannot stand this dire-this dire, this dire” “Suspense,” finished Peer Haps automatically. “Yes, speak up, fellow!” he cried anxiously.

  “In four days, a monster will marry the Princess!” wailed Abrog, pulling his peaked cap down over his eyes. “In four days, four days, four days!” And having said this, he began to gallop ‘round the breakfast table, Peer Haps and the Forgetful Poet right after him. You, yourself, can imagine the effect of such a message on the merry old Peer of Perhaps City.

  Why, he prized the little Princess above all his possessions, yes, even above his yellow hen who was a brick layer and laid gold bricks instead of eggs. Indeed, she had done more than anyone else to lay the foundation of his fortune.

  “What kind of a m-monster?” stuttered the Forgetful Poet, waving his muffin.

  “Where is my daughter now?” demanded Peer Haps, seizing Abrog by the whiskers, for there seemed no other way of stopping him. Abrog waved feebly toward the window and, rushing across the room, the Peer and the poet stared out into the garden where the sweetest little Princess in all the countries of the East was gathering roses. She waved gaily to the two in the window, and, with a shudder, Peer Haps turned back to Abrog.

  “Let me see the prophecy,” he demanded, holding out his hand. Abrog produced a crumpled parchment and after one glance the old Peer covered his face and sank groaning into his enormous arm chair. The Forgetful Poet had read over his shoulder and instantly burst into all the melancholy poems he knew. “Oh, hush!” begged the old monarch at last,

  “and you,” he waved wildly at the prophet, can you do nothing but run ‘round that table like a merry-go-round goat?”

  “I could marry the Princess myself,” rasped Abrog, coming to a sudden standstill before the Peer. “If she were already married to me, a monster could not marry her,” he leered triumphantly.

  “To you!” shrieked Percy Vere, crushing his muffin to a pulp. “You weazened, wild, old, whiskered dunce, Be off! Be gone! Get out, at-at-at-at-” Percy began hopping about on one foot groaning, “What’s the word, what’s the word?”

  “Once!” finished Peer Haps, mopping his forehead and glaring at Abrog, for he was stunned
at the old man’s suggestion. “It wouldn’t do at all,” he muttered gloomily. “Why, you’re a thousand years old if you’re a day, and she’s the only daughter I’ve got.”

  “Well, you won’t have her long,” sneered Abrog, gathering his robe about him.

  His black eyes gleamed wickedly from beneath their bushy brows. He was furiously angry, but quickly hiding his feelings he began to move slowly toward the door. Halfway there he paused. “Since you refuse my first solution of the difficulty, I will endeavor to think of another one. I used to know a little magic,” he wheezed craftily. “I will retire to my tower to think.”

  Peer Haps nodded absently. He was too dazed to think himself and could only mutter over and over, “A monster! A monster! My daughter! A monster!”

  “The fellow’s a fool!” choked Percy Vere. “He’s as full of ideas as a dish pan. Why he’s a monster himself!”

  “But there’s something in what he says,” groaned the old Peer unhappily. “If my daughter were already married when this monster came, he could not carry her off. I have it! Percy, we’ll marry the Princess at once, to the likeliest lad in Perhaps City.”

  “To me!” cried the Forgetful Poet, tossing back his long locks and sticking out his chest complacently.

  “Well—er,” the old monarch looked a trifle embarrassed, “you’re hardly the man to marry and settle down to a humdrum royal existence. I was thinking of young Perix.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Percy, mollified at once. “Marriage would interfere with my career, O Peer. Shall I fetch our pretty little Princess?”

  “Yes, call her at once,” begged Peer Haps, clasping and unclasping his hands, “but don’t frighten her, Percy my boy, no talk of marriage or monsters!”

  Percy felt that the only thing he could do, under the circumstances, was to lapse into verse. “I go, I go, on heel and toe To fetch the sweetest girl I know, The Princess of Perhaps City, As sweet as sugar full of tea!” caroled the Forgetful Poet, bounding through the door into the garden. Peer Haps smiled faintly, then remembering the monster, frowned and began drumming nervously on the arm of his chair. He did not even look up when the yellow hen hopped into the room, and, with a self-conscious cluck, laid a gold brick on the mantel.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the hen sulkily. “Everything!” groaned Peer Haps, straining his eyes for the first sign of Percy and the Princess. “Everything!” At that instant Percy rushed back.

  “The Princess is lost, gone, mislaid!” cried the Forgetful Poet, crossing his eyes in his extreme agitation.

  “You speak as if she were an egg,” clucked the yellow hen, but no one paid any attention to her and in a huff the spoiled creature flew out the window and dropped a gold brick on the head of the chief gardener. But no one, except the chief gardener, paid any attention to this either, for Peer Haps had raised such a clamor over the disappearance of his daughter that the whole castle was in an uproar. Indeed in five minutes more every woman, man and child in Perhaps City had joined in the search for the missing Princess.

  After they had searched high and low, and everywhere else for that matter, Percy suddenly bethought himself of the prophet and, rushing up the fifty steps to his tower, thumped hard upon the door. There was no answer. Percy flung the door open and there was no prophet. Abrog was gone too! In the face of this new calamity the dreadful prophecy about the monster was almost forgotten. Peer Haps sank down upon his throne and in spite of his sixty years and three hundred pounds wept like a baby.

  “He’s perfectly perfidious!” exclaimed Percy Vere, who was entirely out of breath from the steps. All the courtiers solemnly shook their heads

  “A villain old and hideous, And perfectly perfidious, Has run off with our daughter. What shall be done to him, O Peer, This prophesighing profiteer Deserves both death and-and-”

  “Slaughter,” sobbed Peer Haps convulsively. Then mopping his face he sat up. “Someone must follow him at once and bring her back!” thundered the old monarch.

  “A thousand gold bricks to the man who brings her back. A thousand gold bricks and the Princess’ hand in marriage!” At this there was a great shuffling of feet and the young men of Perhaps City began to exchange uneasy glances.

  “Down the mountain?” asked Perix faintly. “Where else?” demanded Peer Haps, glaring angrily at the young nobleman whom he had intended for his daughter.

  “But we might be dashed to pieces. It is terribly unsafe,” stuttered Perix unhappily. All the other Happsies began to shake their heads and murmur sadly, “Unsafe, very unsafe!”

  “Well, how about my daughter?” roared the poor monarch, puffing out his cheeks.

  “Will no one go after my daughter?” There was more shuffling of feet, but not a voice was raised. We must not be too hard on these young Happsies, remembering that in all their lives and in the lives of their fathers and grandfathers no one had ever descended Maybe Mountain excepting Abrog the old prophet.

  “I’ll go myself!” spluttered Peer Haps explosively. But as he arose with a great groan, the Forgetful Poet rushed forward and embraced as much of the Peer as his arms would circle.

  “You’d be broken to bits!” cried Percy distractedly. “Suppose you stumbled. I, I will go and find the Princess and this meddling, miserable prophet.”

  “You! Why you’ll forget what you’re after before you start,” sneered Perix disagreeably.

  “As to that,” said Percy, snapping his fingers under the young fellow’s nose, “I may forget a word now and then, but I don’t forget how to act when my King is in trouble!”

  “Hurrah!” shouted the gardener, throwing up his hat. He had recovered from the shock of the gold brick. “Hurrah for Percy Vere; he’s the bravest of the lot!”

  “But how will you go?” quavered Peer Haps. He was torn between relief at Percy’s brave offer and sorrow at the thought of losing his prime and favorite companion.

  “Here’s how,” cried the valiant Poet. Rushing down the golden steps of the palace, Percy leaped over the gate and plunged recklessly down the steep mountain side. Percy was well accustomed to hill-climbing and met with no mishap as he plunged downward.

  CHAPTER 9: Dorothy Meets a New Celebrity

  DOROTHY had been to see the Tin Woodman and now, with Toto, her small shaggy dog, running at her side, was skipping merrily down one of the wide Winkie Lanes.

  “I think Nick Chopper looks very well, don’t you Toto?” said Dorothy, tickling his ear with a long feathery weed.

  “Woof!” barked Toto reproachfully. Toto like all other dogs in Oz could talk if he wanted to, but Toto, being originally from Kansas, preferred his own language. Just then, seeing a lively baconfly, Toto gave another bark and dashed across a daisy field. Away fluttered the baconfly, and you have no idea how fast these little rascals can flutter, and away, his ears flapping with excitement, pounded Toto, and away after Toto ran Dorothy, for she was always in fear of losing her reckless little pet. Up and down, here and there, ‘round and ‘round, darted the mischievous baconfly, until Toto’s tongue hung out and he simply panted with exhaustion. Then with a spiteful sputter, the baconfly disappeared under a rhinestone, and after scratching and whining and even growling a little, Toto gave up the chase and trotted rather sheepishly back to Dorothy.

  “That was really too bad of you Toto,” panted the little girl reprovingly. “You wouldn’t eat a poor little baconfly, would you?”

  “Woof, gr-rr woof!” sulked Toto, which was Kansas for “You bet I would!”

  Pretending not to understand this last remark, Dorothy fanned herself with her broad straw hat and started slowly back toward the lane. But the baconfly had led them such a round-about chase that when she did come to the lane she turned in exactly the opposite direction from the way she had intended, and instead of walking toward the Emerald City she began walking away from it. But as neither she nor Toto was aware of this fact, they progressed most cheerfully, Dorothy carrying on a one-sided conversation with the saucy little b
ow-wow. Occasionally Toto would bark or wag his tail, but most of the time he listened in superior silence to the little girl’s chatter of the fun they had had in Nick Chopper’s tin castle.

  Now how Nick Chopper came to have a castle is a story in itself, for Nick has, in the course of his strange and interesting life, risen from a wood-chopper to Emperor of all the Winkies and from an ordinary blood and bone man to a real celebrity of tin. Yes, Nick is entirely a man of tin, as you can see by referring to any of the histories of Oz. In these same histories it is recorded how a wicked witch enchanted Nick’s ax, so that first it cut off his legs, then his arms and finally his body and head. But you cannot kill a good Ozman like Nick Chopper and after each accident he hied him to a tin-smith for repairs.

  First the tin-smith made him tin legs, then tin arms, next a tin body and at last a tin head, so that he was completely a man of tin. And this same little Dorothy, on her first trip to Oz, had discovered the Tin Woodman, rusting in a forest, had oiled up his joints and taken him to the Emerald City itself. There the Wizard of Oz had given him a warm, red plush heart, which he still has and since then Nick has been in almost every important adventure that has happened in the wonderful Land of Oz. Ozma, the little fairy ruler of Oz, finding Nick so dependable and so unusual, has made him Emperor of the East, and the loyal little Winkies have built him a splendid tin castle in the center of their pleasant yellow country.